Annually the SCDC PS-OC will offer pilot project funding for the development of innovative and creative research. It is anticipated that over the 5-years of the Center's funding, a minimum of 10 pilot projects will be awarded. Development of projects will be a topic at monthly joint group meetings (see below) and encouraged by the PI/PD and the Project Leaders. Coordination of the request for proposals, the review process and the awarding and oversight of the financial operations will be handled by the Program Administrator and the Administrative Unit of the PS-OC. We propose to support two pilot projects per year. We envisage that the typical level of support of one of these projects ($60,000) would be sufficient to cover salary support and benefits for a postdoctoral associate plus supplies to support their research. Alternafively a somewhat smaller budget would cover stipend and tuition for a graduate student plus supplies to support their research. However, there will be no fixed size for these pilot projects;actual scale will depend on the needs of the project. Thus, it might be possible in a given year to award several smaller projects involving bioinformatics or computational modeling that would require smaller levels of funding.